As the semester nears its conclusion, a number of our students have performances this week.  

• Our theatre department presents “A Christmas by the Fireside: A 1940's Radio Show” Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30 p.m.
• Theatre students also will be on stage Wednesday morning as our children's theatre touring company is producing “The Reluctant Dragon.”
• Our vocal ensemble, Cardinal Singers, will perform Leonard Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms and other selections during their concert Thursday at 7:30 p.m.
• Our saxophone students will be featured in the semester’s final “Fridays at Founders” at 3:15 p.m. this Friday.
• The student musical group Encore will deliver two performances this Friday and Saturday both at 7 p.m. in Student Center's Thompson Room.  Here is a recent recording by Encore done for SVSU's holiday video greeting.

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Our men’s soccer team travels to Evans, Ga. to play Simon Fraser University in a national semifinal match Thursday at 2 p.m. Our best wishes go with them.

In academic competition, four of our students captured top awards at the 2012 American Model United Nations Conference in Chicago. The teams of Dylan Hellus and Kayla Langmaid, and Jared Quist and Keven Washburn, each captured best delegation honors for their respective presentations. This is quite an achievement, considering our students joined 1,500 other students from 85 schools at the competition.  My congratulations to them and to all our students who competed in this event.

Our strategic planning task force meets this Friday to consider input given at last month’s open forums.  If you have comments to share but have not yet done so, please forward them to Carlos Ramet at ramet@svsu.edu as soon as possible for consideration.

The current draft strategic plan is posted online at www.svsu.edu/missionstatement/strategicplan-draft/.

You may have noticed that construction has begun on the south side of the Doan Science West building. Thanks to a generous gift from the Citizens Bank Charitable Trust, we are in the process of expanding our campus greenhouse. Our plan is to consolidate our greenhouse-related activities from the site on Michigan Road, as the combined, modern facility should benefit students and faculty in their learning and research activities.